There are no great aces without great wingmen and young Lt. Floyd Fulkerson from Little Rock, Arkansas, was one of those wingmen. Although he had four confirmed victories, so he was nearly an ace himself, he sees his primary contribution to the war effort to have been the protection of his lead pilots, some of whom were Americas leading aces. During his time with the 475TH Fighter Group in the Pacific, Floyd flew with such notables as Major Richard Bong, Major Tommy McGuire, and even the much-celebrated Lone Eagle, Charles Lindbergh. Cover the shooter, thats what wingmen do. They protect the shooter from surprise attack. In this role, Fulkerson helped some of our great aces achieve their successes.

Adding aviation and banglist to the pings. Bong and Maguire were very fond of both aerial and ground shooting.

This article is written by my good friend, and FREEPER LURKER John Dejanovich. He has never registered, but I am trying to get him to register as DEJATUN.

John and I used to sell cars together and both got fired for poor car sales probably because we were talking about World War 2. This is an amazing article that, to me, I could hear the Allison engines humming, and the .50 cal.s vibrating in the nose.

Where did we find such great men and humble men as Fulkerson? I 'm glad he is a hometown boy here in Little Rock. Right now he is in the hospital under a spell. Age 92.

Prayers for Floyd and all of those of the greatest generation.

2
posted on 10/11/2012 4:44:32 AM PDT
by DCBryan1
(If there is ever another revolution, we need to decorate telephone poles with the MSM.)

Did you ever get into Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator? There are 3 of them. (I prefer the first one.) It's old, but still VERY COOL!

Hook it up to a nice sound system and get into the sounds! The p-38's engines going in and out of sync sound GREAT! Lots of options AND enemies! There are a multitude of missions & campaigns, extra scenery, and many aftermarket planes you can download for free. You can customize the missions and add different plane/weapons combinations.

The first one has excellent playability, and while the ground scenery isn't quite as high res as the newer ones, you can still get vertigo.

I recommend the wireless Logitech Freedom 2.4 flight stick - I just got one on Ebay for $25.

I remember seeing an article in Air & Space - Smithsonian about the number of aircraft scrapped at the end of the war. Quite a large number of P-38s appear to have gone directly from the factory to the boneyard, so plenty of attrition was obviously expected during the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands.

Now the Lightnings are so rare that people will dig one out of arctic ice:

One of the more interesting features of the P-38 was that its counter rotating props both rotate in a direction that shifts the resultant thrust outboard on the wing. Evidently this was to improve accuracy in gunnery, but it would make flying on a single engine more difficult.

During his time with the 475TH Fighter Group in the Pacific, Floyd flew with such notables as Major Richard Bong, Major Tommy McGuire, and even the much-celebrated Lone Eagle, Charles Lindbergh.

Impressive list. Lot of people forgot that Lindbergh saw quite a bit of combat and was a helluva combat pilot - very accurate. His time flying combat with the 475th (and Lt. Fulkerson) is probably best remembered for Lindbergh rewriting the book on flying the P-38 over long distances, adding 400 miles to the range of the P-38 by adjusting RPMs, fuel mixture, and manifold pressure.

Impressive list. Lot of people forgot that Lindbergh saw quite a bit of combat and was a helluva combat pilot - very accurate. His time flying combat with the 475th (and Lt. Fulkerson) is probably best remembered for Lindbergh rewriting the book on flying the P-38 over long distances, adding 400 miles to the range of the P-38 by adjusting RPMs, fuel mixture, and manifold pressure.

If Lindburg actually flew any combat missions, it was on the down low.

FDR hated Lindburg and would not let him join the AAC. Lindburg was much too well known for FDR to prevent him from traveling to see the troops, however, and giving them the benefit of his expertise.

One of the more interesting features of the P-38 was that its counter rotating props both rotate in a direction that shifts the resultant thrust outboard on the wing. Evidently this was to improve accuracy in gunnery, but it would make flying on a single engine more difficult.

Could you explain? I understand how the props transmit torque to the wings and how counter-rotating props cancel out each other's torque, but I don't understand how the thrust vector would be moved off line from the prop axis.

I'm not saying you're wrong; I just don't understand how that works.

A link to an explanation would be just as good, if the explanation is long, and you don't want to write it all out.

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